How much crying is OK for a newborn child?

Question

My child is just a week old and I've noticed that he is crying all the time when he is awake and we are not holding him.

If we hold him he usually calms down but the longer we don't hold him the harder it is to calm him down. He also behaves rather nervously and seems to have some kind of anxiety. When he is crying he usually scrambles to put his fingers in his mouth but sometimes the only thing which calms him down is breastfeeding.

If I put him down while he is awake he immediately resumes crying. If he falls asleep and we put him down he either stays asleep or wakes up and starts crying.

Is this kind of behavior normal, or is he having colic or some other ailment? What worries me is that there are only 20-30 mins a day when he is awake and calm while not being subject to breastfeeding, holding, or some other kind of interaction. Should I take him to a medical professional?

Answer 1

Before I give you my advice as a mother of 6 and grandmother to boot, I just want you to realize that you were given instincts as parents and to make sure to follow them. :) Newborn babies are supposed to want to be held and should never be left to cry on purpose. She may be tired or cold. Some do love to nurse longer than others. Some babies love to be swaddled as they 'miss' the womb, and this really works to calm down the infant. Have you tried swaddling? Sometimes babies like to be held in a carrier ( although parents don't always enjoy that 24/7) and this calms babies down. It may be too early to tell if your baby has colic or not, but massage and warm baths may help as well. You haven't mentioned how much your baby sleeps, but if he isn't sleeping 12 hours a day, he may be tired. Of course, you are going for your 1 or 2 week checkup ( right?) and you can ask your medical professional to check her out for any issues. Bottom line, it is normal for babies to cry a lot, but I hope some of the above techniques will help you. Good luck!

Answer 2

With my firstborn, he never slept for more than two ours at a time, and cried for pretty much all the time he was awake, until he was seven months old. We tried everything we could think of, nothing seemed to help.

Our next two children cried much less, so we thought we'd probably done something wrong with the first one when we were still new at parenting.

Then the fourth came along and cried a lot again. Again, nothing seemed to help. We never figured out the cause for the crying.

Point of the story: There isn't any baseline for how much crying is ok. Of course you can collect data from thousands of parents to determine a "crying average" and call this normal, but fact is, this is completely useless to you, because babies aren't all the same. You've got this unique tiny individual at home and even though he's this horrible noise-maker and sleep-robber right now, he'll stop crying in time. Hang in there while it lasts. I know it's difficult, but it WILL GET BETTER.

(The important thing while it lasts is to never ever lose your temper when he doesn't stop crying and you are dead tired. Don't ever shake him. I agree with @suse that you generally shouldn't leave him to cry, but if you notice you're getting angry with him, it's better to put him down and put a sound barrier between yourself and him for a while, so you can regain your temper)

Answer 3

There is no exact reason for more or less crying of new born baby. It normally relates to natural habit of newborn. This cycle goes upto two month when baby make its cycle of feeding , sleeping and feeling others. Most of the babies get settled at the age of 4 months by getting attentions of others surrounding him, but even than some babies continue to cry more unless they become more than a year.